Tuesday morning I was the first one into the office. I headed into the kitchen to put my lunch stuff in the fridge, and decided I would be nice and start the coffee for everyone else. Checked to make sure the pot had been set up the night before, which required opening the little door to make sure there was a filter full of coffee. Then I pressed ‘On’ and went back to my desk and did not think a thing about it until about half an hour later, when I remembered ‘oh yeah, coffee’. By this time, two more coworkers had arrived, and as one, we all headed toward the kitchen.

My first thought was ‘there’s a lot of water on the floor’, followed by ‘wow, we have some kind of nasty leak’ and then, only then did I actually look toward the coffee pot and discover that apparently when I checked to make sure there was a filter full of coffee, I did not get the little door closed properly, and it had swung open, resulting in an entire coffee pot full of extremely hot water to do its best to cover the entire kitchen. In case you were wondering, one coffee pot full of water can cover a very large area.

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This morning, as I was approaching the door to my office, I twisted my foot, just a little bit. Just a tiny little stumble (because no one will ever accuse me of having any grace whatsoever); nothing major. Except that by the time I got inside I could barely put any weight on it, and I had to beg my coworker to come pull my chair over so I could sit down and wheel myself the rest of the way to my desk.

Two ibuprofin later, I can focus on something other than my throbbing foot. Can’t put my full weight on it yet, which makes walking around kind of fun (I can stand on my toes on that foot, so it’s an interesting sort of hobble), and I have to be careful how I bend it, because normal walking flexes it in just the right angle to start the pain again. But I don’t think I did anything too serious. I hope.

I am enjoying what has been, so far, a very three day weekend. Got to sleep in a whole extra half hour on Friday morning (since I had it off from work) before Sebastian’s hollering finally dragged me out of bed. Took advantage of the fact that I did not have to actually go anywhere any time soon to cook breakfast – a scramble of diced sweet potato, eggs, and some salsa (next time, remember to add onions and maybe some green pepper). Then I spent a lovely hour doing nothing more strenuous than lounging on the bed and knitting, before the house call vet came over to ‘torture’ the cats (otherwise known as giving them their yearly check-up).

Since we’ll be moving, all the cats got rabies shots this year. They’re all indoor only, so we haven’t bothered with rabies shots the entire time we’ve been in the current house, but we figured it was a good idea to get them vaccinated now, just in case one of them gets out, or something happens. Sebastian was the first, mainly because he was standing right there, looking puzzled, so he was easy to grab. He’s lost about half a pound, which isn’t too bad considering he’s always been on the dense side, but luckily that half pound didn’t go anywhere, since Rosie hung onto it for him. Tangerine’s got earmites again – sigh – since she seems peculiarly prone to them. Zucchini, of course, was his usual terrified self, and peed all over the kitchen floor during the scant two minutes it took for me to hold him down and for the vet to peer at his teeth and stab him in the hind leg with a tiny needle. And Checkers – oh my, what a year can do. Last year we had to burrito-wrap her in a towel to keep her from shredding either me or the vet with flailing claws and teeth. This year, she was scared, but there was no screaming, no flailing, no biting. She just burrowed into my elbow and let the vet do her thing, and best of all, she’s gained a full pound – weight she very badly needed to gain.

Yesterday we did a whirlwind errand run in the morning, loading up the car with all the recyclables and taking them to the recycling center, then swinging through Starbucks for some coffee and scones, followed immediately by a trip to Vacaville to pick up cat litter and a bird feeder for my dad for Father’s Day. We did a quick run through CostCo, then the grocery store, so now the kitchen is fully restocked for another week of healthy meals, and then it was home to do nothing remotely productive beyond knitting and playing Civ 4, and watch the latest episode of Dr. Who.

This morning, since it seems only fitting that things continue along in the same vein, three day weekend or no, included no sleeping in for me. But instead of hiding under the covers and trying to make the cats go away through sheer force of will, I instead got up and decided to make the best of it, which primarily meant tossing some chicken into some spicy yogurt-based marinade for tonight’s dinner, then making a new batch of yogurt (since with the marinade, we were nearly out – have I mentioned lately how very cool this yogurt maker is?). We’ll meet my parents and my older sister and her family for lunch shortly, then it’s off to Vacaville for knitting group (for me) and writing at Borders (for Richard) and that, aside from doing laundry and cooking dinner and doing a bunch of prep work for meals for the coming week, will be it for the day.

That was some of the most fun I’ve had with online journaling in years. Not only was it fun writing up my own pieces; it was fun following along with everyone else’s. And of course, there was yet more proof that I have the most awesome husband ever. Seriously. Even when sinking into zombiehood, his last thoughts were of me and the cats.

But anyway. Back to the real world. The fun of writing yesterday was finding ways to incorporate real life stuff into the what-if of a zombie uprising. That car I saw, pulled over with all the police? Real. The story I told about the guy floating down the river, and the other guy who fell in and drowned? Real. The rest of it…well, I’ll leave it to you readers to pick out what else might have been fantasy versus fact. In the meantime, now that we are free from the threat of marauding zombies, I’m nailing down vacation time for the first week of July, because that’s when we’ll be moving. There is so much to do to get ready for it, and so much to do once we get the key, before we can bring in the furniture, and so much to do once we’re finally in, and if I let it, it sometimes gets a little overwhelming, but we’re too excited to care. And woe be unto any zombies who might get in our way.

Updated to add a link to this because it is quite possibly one of the best entries from yesterday’s little trip down zombie lane.

Getting to work today was all kinds of not fun. Seems like everyone decided today was the day to get into some kind of fender bender, and of course these had to happen right before the causeway in Davis, which means traffic was backed up for miles. I called Richard (dutifully using my hands-free device, which never fits well enough in my ear that I maintain any sort of confidence it will not go leaping out of its own volition one of these days. But I digress) to see if he could dig up any traffic incident report, just so I would know how much longer I was going to have to be inching along at the oh-so-swift speed of five miles per hour, but he couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t until I got to work today that I found out what had happened. Two or three-car pile up shortly before the causeway, apparently, timed just right so that by the time I would have passed the accident, it was already gone. As it was, it took me nearly an hour to make a trip that usually takes only half that long to drive. Yet another reason I am looking forward to moving to Sacramento – at least when we are there, I’ll have more than one route to get to work. Right now, I’ve got my choice of two highways, both of which have a tendency to have inexplicable slow-downs because they include hills and apparently to the drivers in Solano County, hills are so unnerving that everyone had to hit their brakes and, just for kicks and giggles, plow into each other from time to time because sometimes slowing down for a slight incline isn’t fun enough.

I suppose if it hadn’t been for the traffic, I wouldn’t have seen that one car though. As I was inching my way along the freeway, singing along to my Abba CD (because I defy anyone to listen to Abba and *not* sing along), a highway patrol car came screaming by on the shoulder. I saw it later, stopped by yet another accident – this one on the opposite side of the freeway, though – but as it was passing, it drew my eyes toward the road that runs slightly parallel beside the freeway. There’s this one building there that cannot ever seem to be successful, no matter who goes in there. It’s been a succession of diners – it’s even been a Dennys twice since I’ve lived around here – but the last diner gave up a month or three ago and now it’s just this boarded up building with a big empty parking lot in front, waiting for the next enthusiastically delusional young diner owner to fall in love with it and give it a go. Anyway. Right in front of this was a white car, pulled off to the side of the road, surrounded by more police cars than I’ve ever seen in one location for a simple traffic stop. The thing that struck me, however, was that for all the cars, there wasn’t a soul to be seen. Just a lot of patrol cars and a lot of flashing lights and the little white car sitting there by the side of the road with no one inside.

I had a truly wonderful time the rest of Thursday, because the reason I took the day off in the first place was that the Yarn Harlot‘s only California stop was in Petaluma, at Copperfield Books, and I didn’t want to miss it. It helps that I have all this vacation time I never get around to taking. So after lunch I picked up my knitting mom and she and I drove off to Petaluma. I find great amusement in the fact that of the four book signings I have now attended in the past year, three of them (the Yarn Harlot, Terry Pratchett, and Christopher Moore) have been at Copperfields in Petaluma.

There was talk of going to a Faire this weekend, but by the time we both dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning, it was far too late to be heading off to Tahoe, so instead Richard went off to his writer’s group and I drove all over Vacaville shopping for a birthday and Father’s Day present for my dad. The birthday present was easy to find since I knew exactly where to look, but the Father’s Day present is apparently far less available than I would have guessed, so I am still searching. Otherwise I spent Saturday lounging about, reading ineffectual mysteries where the point of view tends to jump between far too many characters, and whose common thread (a tenuous one at best) is that they’re all centered around a woman who runs a needlework store, but they are quick to read and require not thought whatsoever and sometimes that is the sort of reading I prefer. Sunday was more of the same, but included baking a low-sodium chocolate cake for my dad for his birthday party, meeting a bunch of knitters for lunch, and starting an experimental batch of yogurt that involved soy milk instead of regular milk and would have probably had a far greater chance of success if I had remembered to turn the yogurt maker *on* once I plugged it in last night. Ah well. Oh, and it also included watching the latest episode of Dr. Who and wow but this season is amazing and intense and proving just how outstanding an actor David Tennant really is. I may never look at big stone statues the same way again (and also it made me love gargoyles just that little big more.

This morning we met our realtor over at the house in Sacramento and took copious measurements of the entire lower floor so we can then calculate out total square footage of alternative floor covering that is needed to replace the rather shaggy carpet that is currently in place. We also walked around the house for a little bit and added a few more things to the rapidly expanding list of ‘we should’ and ‘we could’ for this new house, because purchasing a house is basically buying into a design/renovation project of epic proportions that will never end. I was going to take some pictures of the unfortunate kitchen and the turqouise bedroom, but I left my camera at home, so you will all just have to keep on using your imagination on those rooms, likely until we move in.

My dad turned 60 today, which seems somehow very difficult to believe, because I am not sure I am ready for that (I suspect neither is he). All family members living within driving distance gathered at my parents’ house this evening for dinner and presents and experimental low-sodium chocolate cake (which was…interesting. Not bad. But…interesting), and my little sister and my niece called in from Seattle so we all sang him Happy Birthday together over the phone lines as one big connected family and it was cute and fun.